While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Matt Gurney.
It seems odd to even suggest this right now, but … what if the plane was a good idea? Seriously. What if a private jet for the use of the premier and other key officials was actually worth considering?
Congratulations to Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals on securing their majority. Now, please, please, pick a fighter jet already. No one can stop you! This isn’t the first time I’ve made this exact plea in these very pages. It was just last September that I begged the prime minister to get around to picking a jet to replace...
Not once have I ever thought that Doug Ford has much in common at all with U.S. President Donald Trump. Sure, the Ontario premier is a blustery, (in-theory) right-leaning politician who even has a passing physical resemblance to the U.S. president. But anyone actually making the comparison has always been, in my mind, confessing how superficial their understanding of either...
I don’t know what the Conservatives’ path back to electoral relevance looks like. If I did, I might try to sell them the roadmap for a heap of money. I do have a strong hunch it won’t involve attacking the academic credentials of Prime Minister Mark Carney, he of the Liberals’ newly established majority government. That’s why it’s been so...
The most basic problem now confronting Donald Trump isn’t a matter of complex geopolitics. It’s more a simple matter of talent. The U.S. president, as much as many people hate to admit it, does have some real talents. He’s a natural showman. He’s a talented negotiator. And, as commander in chief of the world’s greatest military, he has a lot...
Let’s talk for a moment about the scale of Canada’s ambition and how it compares to the scale of what we can plausibly achieve. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced major plans for Arctic infrastructure. Much of the $35 billion budgeted for them will be used to expand and upgrade existing military facilities; these, in theory, will increase the...
By luring now-former NDP Lori Idlout across the floor to join the Liberal caucus, Prime Minister Mark Carney has brought his Liberals up to 170. With three byelections pending, two of which are in reliably safe Liberal seats and the third a Liberal-Bloc tossup, the Liberals seem set to achieve a bare minimum majority in the near future, almost a...
The prime minister has been flying all over the world lately, doing his best to drum up new business opportunities for Canada. No criticism there. It’s a huge part of how Canada will adapt to this strange new global order, and he’s probably better suited to it than most. But let’s not miss out on chances to find new opportunities...
TORONTO—For the last week or two, any time the federal government has tried to explain what this country’s position actually is towards India, we haven’t come off looking great. There is a very simple explanation for this incoherence, but there is also a more alarming one, and I think that one is worth spending a minute thinking about. First, let’s...
In almost any context, one of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s major problems — and it’s one that he inherited, in fairness to him — is the state of the Canadian Armed Forces. Our military is too small to do all the jobs we need it to do. It lacks critical capabilities necessary for survival on the modern battlefield. Manpower shortages...
Retired general Wayne Eyre, Canada’s former chief of the defence staff, says this country’s security and sovereignty would be best protected if we possessed our own nuclear weapons and the delivery systems to fire them at whatever targets we deemed in need of vaporization. He didn’t recommend starting a program at once, but said it would be the only real...
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had a pretty good convention. It seems to have been a well-organized affair, competently pulled off. Poilievre’s speech was well received, and he certainly has nothing to complain about regarding the 87-plus per cent support he got from party members for his continued leadership. So yeah. It’s mostly good news. But the man is facing some...
Conservatives are beginning to gather in Calgary for their national convention. It’ll start today and run through to Saturday; The Line will be covering it, so stay tuned for more. One of the items on the agenda, and a rather important one, is going to be a review of how Pierre Poilievre performed during the last federal election, which was...
A few months ago, the PM spoke of sacrifice as Canada realigned around new priorities. The same theme popped up in a Globe and Mail story last week about planning work at Canadian Defence HQ about how to resist, via an insurgency, an American attack. The key line to me in that story was this: 'Conscription has been ruled out...
It seems like a million years ago now, but do you remember the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership? It was signed between Canada and some Pacific nations plus the United Kingdom way back in that long-ago time of 2018. I remember being amused by it—not because of what was in the deal, but because of some of the...
Canada‘s existing fleet of fighter jets is overdue for replacement. The CF-18s have been operating continuously since the early 1980s, longer than most of their pilots have been alive. The basic existing design of the fighter is even older than that. They should have been replaced long ago. This was supposedly a priority for the Harper government. In theory, it...
The Major Projects Office’s list of major projects has gotten longer. The new additions include electrical generation projects, mines, and an additional LNG export facility on the B.C. Coast, and more. It’s a good list. It captures both real economic needs and opportunities, and also sprinkles ventures all around the country.
Reflective contrarianism isn’t my thing, so you can take everything you’re about to read as my literal, sincere view. Pete Hoekstra, the United States’ ambassador to Canada, is a godsend. I love the guy. We need 10 more just like him. We should put a microphone on him and leave it on at all times, with a special YouTube channel...
It’s time for Doug Ford to focus on being the premier of Ontario. He’ll be sad to hang up the Captain Canada cape, but the best thing he can do to help this country stand up to U.S. President Donald Trump is to make sure our most populous province is running at peak efficiency. Right now, it isn’t. Let’s get...
Mark Carney went to Washington. Then he came back. Other than leaving Dominic LeBlanc behind, not much else happened. That’s maybe a touch too cynical. Face-to-face meetings matter. Relationships matter. Getting Canada’s issues at the top of the White House’s agenda matters. That’s always been true but it’s especially true with this White House, where domestic and foreign policy seem...
Prime Minister Mark Carney has taken some predictable fire from Conservatives for his frequent jaunts abroad. After hitting the United Nations in New York recently, Carney was off to London, U.K., for a conference and meetings with other Western leaders. The Conservative attack line was what you’d expect: globe-trotting PM, problems at home, blah, blah, blah. I tune it out...
Mark Carney shouldn’t have been saddled with a failing Canada Post. A labour dispute over a contract? Any PM can end up in that situation, and if they stay in office long enough, they will. But the mess Carney faces with Canada Post has been obvious for years. It was clearly seen, talked about at length, and the last government...
The federal gun confiscation program that will be announced in a few hours is illogical. It won’t save lives or make the public safer. The federal government doesn’t really even expect it to work, and is only going ahead with it because they’ve been stuck with a dumb proposal the Trudeau government made almost five years ago. If they could...
Prime Minister Mark Carney won’t want to hear this. Lord knows he has enough on his plate. But he absolutely needs to make a decision, as soon as possible, on a major purchase of fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force. This is not something we can afford to delay any longer. Our national security depends on it.
Canada is now Mark Carney’s problem. He actively campaigned on it being his problem. And I’m politely asking him and his government, on behalf of 41 million of my buddies, to imagine how they’ll respond to the next crisis, when it comes. We need to know now.
Pierre Poilievre is going back to Parliament. Having easily and decisively won the recent byelection in Alberta, the Conservative leader is assured of soon finding himself across the aisle from Prime Minister Mark Carney. Which, like the cooling nights and the earlier sunsets, is a sure sign that our summer is nearly over.
The United States holds tremendous economic leverage over us. For now, Canada is protected by the existing North American trade agreement and most of our exports to the U.S. are tariff-exempt. But the agreement will soon be renegotiated and that’s when the U.S. will apply real pressure.
Mark Carney deserves time. He needs time in order to get up to speed, fair enough. But time is not his friend. Every prime minister should get a chance. No matter who I may have preferred, or who I may have cast a ballot for, once the Canadian people have spoken, a duly elected prime minister and their government have...
Matt Gurney: Let’s open with something of a confession. Or maybe a strategic repositioning of the shield I use to cover my bottom from being called out for bad predictions. In the immediate aftermath of the election, I would have said, with no reservations, that I thought Pierre Poilievre was safe as Conservative leader. I still think that, but now...
Susan Delacourt: Thanks to Doug Ford, I have had a song stuck in my head for days this week. “Love is in the Air,” a one-hit wonder from the 1970s, turned into the soundtrack of the first ministers’ meeting after the Ontario premier walked in singing it.
Matt Gurney: Over the last few weeks, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s postelection government has been shaping up. A cabinet has been announced. Parliamentarians are being sworn in — including the PM, for the first time. Some key staff positions remain unfilled. With the House returning next week and the King coming to town, what’s your sense of where things stand...
There isn’t much point going on at any length analyzing Prime Minister Mark Carney’s refreshed cabinet. There’s some good moves there (Anita Anand to Foreign Affairs is a massive upgrade in a critical portfolio). There’s some bad news (a rookie GTA MP as energy minister, now?!). And there isn’t a snappy or definitive answer as to whether this cabinet marks...
Susan Delacourt: One word leapt out at me in a piece you wrote for this paper last week, Matt, and it was this one: “killed.” As in, the Conservatives got killed in the election. I agree that their hopes got killed — especially the hopes they had when they were 20 points ahead of the Liberals. But here’s the thing...
When my editor asked me recently whether I had any thoughts on a Conservative election post-mortem, my reply was simple: we have to use the term post-mortem in a more literal sense than normal. The Conservatives don’t need to merely review the campaign. They need to figure out precisely what killed them. Because unless they find an answer, they won’t...
Matt Gurney: A few weeks ago, I expressed some irritation with the candidates. I still feel that way. This has been an uninspiring campaign. We are, we’re told, facing major, existential threats to our way of life and maybe even our national survival. And I honestly can’t recall a single policy proposal from any of the parties off the top...
Canada doesn’t have a gun-control problem. And Mark Carney should stop pretending it does. We do have a problem with gun crime, particularly in some of our larger cities. And we also have a problem with intimate-partner violence. These problems need attention and, critically, more resources. What they don’t need is more gun-control laws: everything that should be illegal already...
Susan Delacourt: Well, the debates are now behind us, advance voting is under way, and I am thinking a lot this weekend about the whole idea of change. I wonder whether the debates changed anything. I’m curious to see if poll trends change in the last week of this election. And I’m also reflecting on Pierre Poilievre and whether we’ve...
Matt Gurney: Something the small but mighty team at The Line is doing during the campaign is a fun little feature with a profane name we publish on Fridays. It’s an accountability/fact-check feature. Last week, we noted in it that the parties were more or less behaving and keeping relatively honest. As late as the middle of this week, that...
The bizarre end—for now, anyway—of the political career of outgoing Liberal MP Paul Chiang got a lot of attention last week, and you can see why. It was newsy. It was germane to two major political questions: which party is better placed to tackle foreign interference, and also, Mark Carney’s surefootedness as a new and largely untested political leader. In...
Matt Gurney: I want to ask you a specific question about the campaign — a few different parts of it, really. But I want to lead with a broader question, just as a vibe check. Does this feel like an election yet? I have to say, it doesn’t to me. It’s my job to follow this stuff. I do! But...
Welcome to Election 2025 and the weekly campaign edition of On The Contrary, in which Susan Delacourt and Matt Gurney will be tracking the race by focusing on the five people who have made things interesting or game-changing.
It’s been a surprisingly quiet race so far. That may not last, but after all the drama and buildup, the relative tameness of this campaign has been ... unexpected? Pleasant? Perhaps the main story so far is a report published Tuesday in the Globe and Mail, citing a CSIS official with top-secret clearance, about interference by the Indian government during...
Matt Gurney: Well, here we are. Yay, I guess. There goes our April. For the one or two readers who haven’t heard, Susan and I are writing this when an election call is believed to be imminent. This will probably hit the presses as one is called. There’s so many angles to get started with, but here’s one I’m not...
On Thursday, Pierre Poilievre announced a plan for “shovel-ready zones” across the country to accelerate development projects. Apparently, in these zones, projects come pre-approved. Neat! Getting stuff done is hard in this country — too hard. What a shovel-ready zone is or how it’ll work isn’t clear, but from the Conservatives, it’s still great to see.
Susan Delacourt: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Matt, but we are days away from an Ontario election. While it’s dangerous to make predictions in politics these days, you want to take a guess at what we might see when all the votes are tallied Thursday night?
Susan Delacourt: Donald Trump is no friend to progressives in Canada, to state the obvious. But I’m sure I’m not the only person wondering these days how much of a pal he is to Canadian conservatives, both provincially and federally.
Canada is facing a national crisis. So let’s talk about the post office. The Canada Post Corporation just received a federal loan of $1 billion to cover costs while it, in theory, reforms itself and becomes financially sustainable. Readers may recall that the recent strike was largely over the union’s reluctance to support such reforms.
In a recurring feature, Susan Delacourt, a small-l liberal, and Matt Gurney, a small-c conservative, bring their different perspectives — and shared commitment to civil disagreement — to the political debates of the moment.
How Canada can best respond to Donald Trump’s musings about us becoming the 51st state — even coercing us into it, economically, if we prove reluctant — is something a lot of Canadians are currently pondering. I was recently pondering it myself, on a beach in Miami, just down the coast from Mar-a-Lago, on a too-short family trip down to...
Susan Delacourt: Any other week, Matt, we probably would have been talking about Justin Trudeau’s resignation last Monday. But Donald Trump has walked all over that conversation with his threats to force Canada into a merger with the United States. I actually can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence. So let’s talk about what he has done to throw...
For those who enjoy indulging in a little Ottawa “Kremlinology,” there’s been a lot of interesting buzz, increasingly in the open, about rifts in the Liberal government. The most prominent of those differences includes two cabinet ministers, who have perhaps the highest profiles: Mélanie Joly and, just this week, Chrystia Freeland. Other disagreements are less prominent, but no less instructive...
For those who enjoy indulging in a little Ottawa “Kremlinology,” there’s been a lot of interesting buzz, increasingly in the open, about rifts in the Liberal government. The most prominent of those differences includes two cabinet ministers, who have perhaps the highest profiles: Mélanie Joly and, just this week, Chrystia Freeland.
In a recurring feature, Susan Delacourt, a small-l liberal, and Matt Gurney, a small-c conservative, bring their different perspectives — and shared commitment to civil disagreement — to the political debates of the moment.
One of the hardest things for Canadians over the next four (and a bit) years, I’d wager, is going to be admitting that, sometimes, Donald Trump is going to be right about us. Not always. Not even necessarily often. But sometimes. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew down to Mar-a-Lago last week for dinner with the president-elect. The dinner was, by...
Susan Delacourt: Liberals, at least the ones with some optimism left in them, are pretty sure that good news for Donald Trump will be good news for Justin Trudeau. The idea is that the more crazy things look in the U.S., the more Canadians will want some stable leadership here.
Susan Delacourt: The current Liberal leadership drama has had a lot of people riveted over the past couple of weeks. But it seems that one guy in particular — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre — is glued to every development. He brings it up constantly in the House of Commons. He talks about what he’s seen on CBC, which is a...
Susan Delacourt: Earlier this week, for non-column purposes, you and I were chatting about the fire hose of news in what was supposed to be the post-Thanksgiving “break.” Justin Trudeau is facing a caucus mutiny, a diplomatic blow-up with India and, let’s not forget, the all-day testimony before the foreign-interference inquiry. Assuming that nothing else explodes into the headlines next...
Matt Gurney: This one feels a bit like déjà vu all over again, but not a ton has changed politically since our last chat. Things are mostly ticking along as they were, at least at home — geopolitically, things are bonkers. That may matter at home, but it hasn’t yet, at least not much.
Susan Delacourt: A funny thing happened on the way to Parliament getting back in business last week. And no, I am not talking about the clutch of protesters threatening MPs, which isn’t really that funny at all. I’m referring to the fact that all our federal politicians just got back to the Commons and they’re all talking pretty tough —...
As of early Tuesday morning, with all polls reporting but at least one recount possible, the NDP has won Winnipeg’s Elmwood—Transcona. That long-time NDP seat will stay orange, despite a strong challenge from the Conservatives. Meanwhile, in Montreal’s LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the Bloc has seemingly squeaked out a tiny win over (in something of a surprise) a close Liberal challenge and a...